Handmaid’s sequel WORLD
Modern America inspires author
Margaret Atwood has announced she is writing a sequel to The Handmaid’s Tale – three decades after it was published, and inspired by the state of the modern world.
Called The Testaments, the book will be based 15 years after the final scene of the original, which depicted life under a totalitarian regime in the United States. Set in the near-future, in a fictional republic called Gilead, The Handmaid’s Tale tells of a land where infertility had resulted in women being used as ‘‘Handmaids’’ to carry the children of high-ranking men in government-dictated relationships.
The sequel, Atwood explained, sprung from both reader reaction to the seminal 1985 book, recently turned into a cult television show, and ‘‘the world we’re living in’’.
Upon its release, The Handmaid’s Tale instantly sparked debate and praise from critics, and was swiftly grouped with other dystopian classics such as George Orwell’s 1984 and Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World.